The CNMC seeks a solution to the objections of the State Council to the remuneration model of electrical networks

The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) will meet this Monday to try to find an emergency solution to the objections that the Council of State has presented to the circular on the new remuneration model for the distribution of electrical networks for the period 2026-2031.

The new model must be approved before January 1 and establishes how companies will be paid from 2026 to 2031 for the investment and operation of energy distribution networks and their adaptation to the energy transition.

The Council of State has approved the circular on the methodology for calculating the financial remuneration rate (TRF) of the networks, but has knocked down the one relating to the new remuneration model of distribution, considering that it violates the Electricity Sector Law, since it establishes a limitation on investments in electrical networks, an exclusive power of the Ministry of Ecological Transition.

The ten members of the CNMC council must find a solution to this objection ten days before the end of the year. The problem is that some experts consider that any solution adopted by the CNMC without a hearing procedure would mean the nullity of the normby violating the right of interested parties to present allegations.

One way could be to promote a new circular and have it go through all the procedures. However, this could not be carried out in the remaining ten days of 2025, so another possibility would be the extension of the current framework.

Petition from the Association for the Energy Transition

The Association for the Energy Transition (ATE) has asked the CNMC to substantially modify your calculation methodology circular of the remuneration of investment in electrical networks for the next regulatory period and has shown its concern about the situation that it believes is occurring in the regulation of investments in electrical networks in Spain, a factor that it considers capital for the energy transition and decarbonization of the economy.

The association argues that the Council of State has issued an opinion at the request of the CNMC in which it points to a contradiction between what the regulator’s circular provides and what is being developed by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, understanding this as an overreach of the regulatory function on the field of energy policy.

The ATE defends that these conclusions of the CNMC coincide with the opinion that this association has already expressed in the two allegations processes carried out in recent months.

For all these reasons, it is considered necessary that at the meeting this Monday, December 22, the CNMC reverses its draft circular, given that There is not enough material time to make a new circular and submit it to public consultation for the modifications that must be made for it to come into force on January 1, 2026.

In this way, ATE proposes that the current remuneration method continues in force by audited costs, which, according to what he states, “has worked to date”, and that in the coming months a new proposal for a circular adjusted to the recommendations of the Council of State, the framework of the energy policy promoted by the Ministry in terms of networks and the generation of positive incentives to undertake the investments, both current and anticipatory, that it believes that the Spanish economy needs.